


Snippets from the Vortex

by jeeno2



Series: Short Stories From the Vortex [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Babies, Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Crack, F/M, Fluff, Halloween, Humor, Kissing, Mild Sexual Content, Penis Ghost, Penises, Pete's World, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday, Post-Episode AU: s04e13 Journey's End, Romance, Sexual Content, Strip Poker, Tumblr Prompt, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:13:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 10,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4776638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Doctor x Rose ficlets.  Multiple Doctor incarnations and ratings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At Last (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten x Rose. Written for timepetalsprompts' weekly drabble prompt: "Um, no."

“Wait. Rose,” the Doctor says, pulling away from her, his breath labored in the dim light of her room. “Before we – um. Do this. I have to know –”

She cuts him off with a rough press of her lips to his. And it works, for a moment, her tactic, as he kisses her back with a fervor she’s dreamed about for nearly two years but had never once seen before tonight.

But then he pulls away again. Undeterred. He shakes his head, trying to clear it, his eyes wide, earnest; his hair wild from her roaming hands.

“Won’t you want a proper husband someday?” he asks weakly. Wanting to give her one final out despite the evidence of how much he wants this pressing insistently against her thigh. “A normal life? With predictability and comfort and Sunday football practice for the kids?”

She pulls him down on top of her by way of response. Runs her fingers through his wrecked hair, down his back, and then lower. Watches her beautiful Doctor as his eyes slip closed.

“Um, no,” she tells him. It’s the truth. “Don’t want any of that.  Never have. Never will.” She kisses him again, and he whimpers at the gentle, intimate contact.  Surrendering at last.  “I just want you.”


	2. Peripheral (Ten x Rose, Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for timepetalsprompts weekly drabble prompt, “Reality.” (Ten x Rose; Tentoo x Rose)

He can sense them, sometimes.

In the outer reaches of his mind.  Just at the periphery.  Not so loudly, fortunately, that it disrupts what he’s doing, if he happens to be otherwise fully preoccupied.  

But in the rare, quiet moments – moments when he’s all alone aboard the TARDIS; nights when he’s in bed, chasing sleep – he can hear, see, smell, taste (but never touch) them, living their day-to-day lives in a reality that was never his to share.

They’ve made love, by now, the two of them.  Now they live together in a small flat across town.  Now they have a child; and then another child comes a year later, an unplanned but happy surprise.  

A stray puppy their son finds moves in with them.  There are glimpses of anniversary celebrations, and of birthday parties complete with clowns and laughing children and giant cakes. 

There’s another wedding.  Rose, wearing pink; and another, teary-eyed him who still wears his old face walking a young woman (dressed all in white) down a tulle-decked aisle.   

There’s a grandchild.  And then another, and another.  Suddenly there are too many family birthdays to count. 

And always, above everything else, there is a staggering, breathtaking joy.

* * *

 

The Doctor does his best to keep busy.  To limit these quiet moments when the other reality can’t seem to help but seep through.  

But no matter what he does he can’t seem to block it – them – altogether.  When the images come, he closes his eyes. He does his best not to pry.  And he sends out a silent prayer, to any deities who might be listening, thanking them as earnestly as he can for her happiness.


	3. Spellbound (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for timepetalsprompts' weekly drabble prompt: "Everyday Magic." This Drabble is what earns this series its E rating...

His eyes widen involuntarily at the sight of her as she crawls, catlike, up his prone body, her tongue touching the corner of her smile a half-second before she pounces.

The Doctor stuffs his fist in his mouth in a desperate attempt to stay quiet as she swallows him whole.  She ravishes him, her tongue swirling hot, heavy, and slow around and around his tip, her head bobbing up and down in a tortuously slow rhythm so clearly designed to drive him mad he can’t bear it.

When she hollows out her cheeks and looks up at him through those gorgeous, half-lidded eyes he cries out anyway, all half-hearted attempts at being quiet abandoned, and his hands spasm reflexively at his sides.  He fists the sheets beneath him, and he watches, helplessly, completely spellbound, as he disappears into her luscious mouth again and again, the entire universe collapsed down to the sweet magic Rose Tyler works on him whenever they’re together like this.


	4. Isn't She Lovely (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the timepetalsprompts prompt: "Everyday Magic."

Ten fingers. Ten toes. 

A cacophony of squeals and giggles and other ecstatic little noises that never fail to make him giddy no matter what else might be going on in the universe.

He was so worried before. That he’d be rubbish at this after so long. That after their daughter was finally here he’d come to regret his decision to join Rose on the slow path like this – in such a permanent, irreversible way.

But she’s worked an incredible sort of magic on him, their little girl, turning his fears into dust from the very moment of her arrival. And when she looks up at him now with those big beautiful eyes, with that smile of hers that’s so very much like her mother’s, he can’t help but smile back at her with all the multitudes of love he feels for her in his hearts.


	5. Turning on a Dime (Nine x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet written for ceruleanbluesart on tumblr, who left a "trick or treat!" in my Ask box. :) Based in part on the following prompt from OTPprompts: "Person A is in bed reading a book. Person B enters and climbs into bed with them. Without looking up person A raises their arm so that person B can crawl under and snuggle up with them. Person B falls asleep."

The Doctor knows the precise moment everything changed.  

* * *

It was the night after they’d left 1869 Cardiff.  Rose had been amazing that day.  Simply amazing.  She’d stood by his side, strong and brave and steadfast and true, staying with him the entire time they hid together in that terrible basement.  She held his hand through everything that had happened afterwards with the Gelth and with Gwenyth, and only let him go once they were both safely back inside the TARDIS.  

But despite her brave appearance the experience had taken its toll on her.  Of course it had.  Throughout dinner she’d been uncharacteristically listless and quiet, twirling her pasta round her fork and her plate without touching it and staring over his shoulder at nothing at all.  He didn’t need a telepathic bond with the girl to know that everything that had happened to them that day had shaken her up far more than she was letting on.

And so when she knocked on his bedroom door, hours later, he’d already been half-expecting her, thinking she probably wanted to talk over what had happened that day.  (Part of him also worried she was going to ask him to bring her home – but he refused to let himself dwell on either that thought or how much the idea of her leaving terrified him.)

“Come in,” he said without a second thought, resting the open book he’d been reading spine side up on his stomach.

A moment later the door to his bedroom flew open and Rose Tyler — his strong, brave Rose Tyler – burst through it like something out of a half-forgotten dream.  She was wearing those ridiculous fuzzy bunny slippers she liked to wear in the mornings and a nightdress that stopped a full six inches above her knees.  It fit her like a glove, the nightdress did, hugging all the curves he refused to let himself think about earlier, when she was in period costume, and leaving very little to the Doctor’s nearly dormant imagination.

Rose didn’t wait for any further invitation to enter his room.  When she saw him lying there in his bed, his mouth hanging open and his eyes fixed on her like he was some stupid ape, she made a beeline right for him.

“Oh thank God you’re here, Doctor,” Rose whimpered.  She sounded legitimately terrified, making his hearts stutter painfully in his chest.  “I had a terrible nightmare that you were gone.”  She put one hand on his arm and shook her head.  He could feel the warmth of her touch through the thick fabric of his jumper and all the way down to his skin.  And he shivered, despite the fact that just a few moments ago he’d been too warm.  "Can I stay with you for a little while?“

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed quickly, nodding.  Though in truth his brain wasn’t operating properly at the moment and he hadn’t quite heard what she’d said.  

She climbed into bed next to him and he reflexively wrapped one arm around her small body.  And she continued to talk to him as though nothing at all had changed, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was completely unable to take his eyes off of her, and as though his universe hadn’t completely shifted on its axis the moment she’d walked through that door.

She ended up in his arms that night, her beautiful legs all tangled up with his beneath the sheets as she slept.  And though the Doctor did his best to get back to his reading the only word he could see in his mind’s eye for the rest of the night was  _Rose._


	6. A Terrible Day (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eightprincessofheart on tumblr gave me the first sentence of this drabble as a prompt: "Rose was having, quite possibly, the worst day of her life." I wrote the next five.

Her alarm didn’t go off that morning, making her more than an hour late for work on one of the busiest shopping days of the year – and then at lunch Mickey phoned to say he was very sorry but he couldn’t take her to Shareen’s party after all.

Now it was midnight on New Year’s Eve and here she was: in trouble with her boss, hanging round the Powell Estates with her mum with nothing to do tonight and nothing much to look forward to in the days to come, either.

On her way back to the flat she bumped into a strange bloke, pissed out of his mind and leaning against the wall – who seemed familiar to her, somehow, though she was quite certain she’d never seen him before in her life. 

His smile when he told her she was going to have a really great year seemed knowing and sincere, which made no sense at all – but the sight of him smiling pulled a matching smile from her, making her heart clench painfully in her chest for reasons she did not understand.

When she looked out her bedroom window a few minutes later he was gone, and Rose shook her head, telling herself tomorrow would be a better day.


	7. Grapholagnia (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for ceruleanbluesart on tumblr for the following prompt: "Grapholagnia -- the urge to stare at obscene pictures." Despite that summary this drabble is rated T. ;)

It took Rose a good long while after they’d been released from the Garxian prison to work up the courage to look.

It isn’t that she hadn’t  _wanted_  to see the pictures.  Because she had.  Very badly, in fact.  Ever since the moment their captors, on what seemed to be a total lark, decided to take pictures of them, separately, completely starkers, she had been unable to think of much else besides what her slim and foxy traveling companion looked like underneath all those pinstriped layers.

But it was one thing to  _want_  to see pictures of your best mate that would likely change the way you thought of them forever – and another thing entirely to actually  _do_  it.  

After a week of incessant wondering – of finding her eyes drawn even more than they usually were to his shapely arse every time he stood in front of her – she decided she couldn’t take another single moment of curiosity.

She waited until the Doctor was out on a parts expedition.  For some inexplicable reason, instead of immediately incinerating his envelope as she had done with hers, he had stashed the thick manila envelope their captors discharged him with under the grating in the TARDIS console room.  Which only stood to make things worse for her this past week, given how often the tantalizing thing was directly in her line of sight.

It took only a few minutes of determined prying to work the grate loose enough for her to extract the envelope out of its shoddy hiding place.  With shaking hands and a racing heart, and hating herself more and more with each passing second for what she was about to do, Rose slid the envelope’s contents out and onto the floor.

She squeezed her eyes shut and warred with herself internally for a solid ten minutes before her conscience lost and her hormonally-tinged curiosity won out.

_I’ll just take a quick peek.  That’s all.  A little peek, then I’ll just put these away and never speak of it again._

To her surprise, however, when she opened her eyes she saw the envelope contained no pictures.  What lay on the grating instead was a single sheet of white paper with a few words hastily scratched on it in blank ink.

Rose picked it up, and went white as the paper in her hands as she read what it said:

_******_

_Rose – if you’re reading this, my plan worked and all my questions have been answered.  And if you still want to see what I look like, just say the word._

_– D_

_******_


	8. Comfort and Joy (Doctor x Rose; Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for timepetalsprompts Friday Ficlet prompt: "Our first Christmas."

It’s been centuries, but he still remembers almost everything about the one Christmas he spent with her.

He remembers the mistrust in her eyes when he emerged from the flames of regeneration in his new, new body.  And how painfully her initial rejection twisted in his gut. (He cringes a little when he thinks back on how eager he was in those earliest moments, all smiles, teeth, and gangly limbs.  But he just was so very desperate to convince her he hadn’t changed.  To make her stay.)

In moments of weakness he sometimes thinks back on how tenderly she cared for him as he lay there, helpless and completely dependent on her, after a regeneration gone almost totally wrong.  More often, he thinks about how brave and trusting she was as he fought the Sycorax, and the sharp thrill that shot straight through him the first time she called him the Doctor again.

Most of all, though, he remembers the happy, little moments from that first Christmas day.  Rose’s sparkling eyes and shy smile when she looked up and saw him standing there in his new suit and tie.  Jackie’s terrible Christmas dinner and how they’d joked about it later.  The crackers they’d pulled.  Harold’s apple.

That ridiculous pink tissue paper crown that matched her rosy cheeks so beautifully it took his breath away. 

The Doctor has had hundreds of Christmases since the only one he spent with his pink and yellow human. Some have been good. Others he’s spent all alone, the TARDIS his only companion.

But none have meant so much to him as that first one did. When she told him she wanted to come with him again his hearts soared in his chest.  As he held her hand, grinning like a fool under an inky, ash-filled sky, the universe seemed full of infinite possibilities once more.  When she smiled back at him he’d been overcome with a staggering, impossible joy.

He hopes the rest of her Christmases were just as happy.


	9. The Wrong Door (Ten x Rose AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from whatisthepointofyouhardy: "Ten x Rose, knocking on the wrong door AU"

“Oh!”

It wasn’t what John expected to hear when he knocked on Jack’s door.  It wasn’t who he expected to _see,_ either – Rose Tyler, a gorgeous girl he met at a party some months ago, with tousled blonde hair and big pouty lips, wearing nothing but an overlarge _Arcade Fire_  t-shirt that stopped halfway to her knees.

“I’m, err.  Sorry,” he said.  He could feel his face turning red, just like it always did when he was mortified.  

And then he started to babble.  

“I thought…. well.  See, I thought this was my mate Jack’s room, right? And we have this Calculus exam tomorrow morning that we were planning on revising for together tonight, and he told me that he lived in this dorm, on this very floor, in fact, but I must have transposed the numbers in my head, and…”

As he ran his mouth a slow smile started to spread across Rose’s face.  When it broadened into a proper grin, John trailed off, but his mouth still kept opening and closing involuntarily like he was a fish out of water.

“Yeah, this isn’t Jack’s room,” she confirmed.  Still smiling.  Her tongue peeked teasingly out of the corner of her mouth, and he found he had to tear his eyes away from it.

“Ah, right.  I guess it isn’t.”  (Was he allowed to look at her legs?  He didn’t think he was allowed to look at her legs.)

She cleared her throat.  “But… I mean, I’m in that class too, you know.”

His eyes widened.  “You are?”  How had he failed to notice _that_?

“I am.”  She smiled again.  “And I’m studying tonight too.  And, I mean…. I’m not Jack.  But since you’re here already and all that, we can, you know.  Revise together.  If you want.”

John swallowed audibly.  He did want.  He _very much_ did want.

“Sure.”  He was smiling now too.  “That sounds lovely.”

* * *

 

As John settled himself at the kitchen table, spreading his books in front of him, Rose sent Jack a quick text, thanking him for his help.  


	10. Unzipped (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to a prompt from tenscupcake: "Zip me, Ten x Rose"

The Doctor’s eyes widen in shock when he hears her request.

Fortunately her back is to him.  So she doesn’t notice.

“Erm,” he says, his collar suddenly too tight and the air in Rose’s bedroom far too warm.  He can’t look directly at her for fear of bursting into flames.  “You want me to do… what?  Exactly?”

“Unzip me,” she says again.  Impatiently this time.  “This thing I’m wearing is too tight.  I can’t reach around to get the zip down.”

In fairness to Rose, the _thing_  she’s wearing – or, rather, the ballgown; to be precise – does have an incredibly snug bodice.  He’s in a better position to know that than just about anyone, really, given how much of the evening they’d spent pressed up against one another on the dance floor of the Galtixx royal court, and how very nearly impossible he’d found it not to openly stare at her magnificent chest all evening.

But in the end, he’d managed to keep his eyes to himself.  

Well – mostly to himself.  

Well – at least he hadn’t gotten _caught_  gaping at her.

Now, though.  Here.  All alone with Rose in her pink and yellow bedroom, her back to him as she waits, expectantly, for him to help her out of her dress.  This right here might be his undoing.

“Please?” she asks, after a long moment that seems to stretch for an eternity. “C’mon, Doctor.  It’ll just take a sec.”

He sighs and closes his eyes, his resolve not to touch her tonight crumbling into dust. Because the truth of the matter is he will never be able to deny Rose Tyler anything she wants.

Feeling rather like he’s in some sort of lurid daydream he walks over to her and puts one hand on the nape of her neck.  He then takes the tiny zipper between thumb and forefinger and slowly, tooth by tooth, pulls it down her back, more and more of her glorious creamy-white skin exposed to his gaze with every inch it travels.  

When he realizes, halfway down, that she’s not wearing a bra, his hands begin to tremble, and his hearts – which have been pounding in his chest ever since he entered her bedroom – are now beating so rapidly it’s like he’s just run a mile.

He feels like an idiot.  Like some randy, out-of-control seventeen-year-old human male.  And he hates himself for it.

“There,” he says, too loudly, when the zipper is finally down to the base of her spine.  She should be able to handle the rest herself.  “That’s all sorted, then.  I’ll just leave you to it.  And I’ll… I’ll see you… erm… tomorrow… for… _oh…_ ”

As he’s speaking Rose pivots slowly in front of him, lowering the front of her dress so that her top half is completely exposed.

“Thank you for helping me, Doctor,” she says, her voice shaking a little but her eyes clear and bold.  She reaches for him.  And he whimpers needfully, powerless to resist her.  

The moment she’s in his arms, hungrily kissing his mouth, his jaw, his neck, half-dressed and lovely and perfect, he knows he was wrong before. This, right here, will be his undoing.


	11. Together (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet written for timepetalsprompts' prompt: "Exhaustion"

Jack noticed before the others did.

The way Rose kept nodding off over her breakfast.  How even he  – the one with the superior Time Lord physiology; the man who rarely slept more than a few hours in a night – kept yawning and rubbing at his eyes.

The truth is, he and Rose were knackered.  

After three years apart the Doctor didn’t want her out of his sight for a single moment, now that they were finally together.  To his amazement, she felt the same way.  And so their joyful reunion lasted all night, filled with all of the desperate passion and tender words he’d dreamed of sharing with her ever since she’d been taken from him.  Her moans and gentle caresses overwhelmed every single one of his senses, making sleep the last thing on either of their minds.

“Can you pass the milk, Doctor?” Jack asked, cutting into his reverie.  Jack’s voice was even but his eyes danced with amusement.

The Doctor didn’t care if Jack had guessed what happened in his bedroom last night.  He didn’t care if Martha, or Sarah Jane, or even if Jackie and Pete knew.  All that mattered to the Doctor was sitting right next to him at the kitchen table, nodding off over her shredded wheat.  

He ignored Jack’s request and leaned over to press a gentle kiss to Rose’s cheek, grateful for miracles large and small.


	12. Terrified (Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small bit of fluff I wrote last October for a timepetalsprompts Halloween prompt: "Spooky."

“It’s not what it looks like!’ the Doctor exclaimed when Jackie found them in the laundry room.  

A lie, obviously. The Doctor’s ridiculous half-costume (a dodgy plastic cape he’d found gods only knew where) hung from his shoulders by a thread.  His hair was in wild disorder from her wandering hands.  And his usually carefully pressed oxford was untucked and rumpled and had a bright red lipstick smear on the collar.

Jackie smirked at each of them in turn, folding her arms tightly across her chest.

“It’s not what it looks like?” she asked dryly, raising one eyebrow.  “Really?  Well, what is it, then?”

Rose bit her lip and adjusted her own costume, feeling her face go pink as her mother continued to stare at the Doctor.  She watched his mouth (the one he’d been using to great effect not moments before) open and close wordlessly as he tried, and failed, to come up with an explanation for what her mum – apparently taking a break from her Hallowe’en party – had just walked in on.

“Erm,” the Doctor said, tugging violently on his right ear.  “Welllll….”

As Rose watched the Doctor babble and splutter and cough, she wondered, amused, how a man who once called himself the Oncoming Storm could be so spooked by his mother-in-law.


	13. Let's Play (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for timepetalsprompts' weekly drabble prompt: "Game"

The Doctor can feel the heat rising in the room as Rose – bolder than he ever dreamed possible – quickly whips off her off t-shirt and tosses it onto the floor.

* * *

 

It had all begun so innocently.  

They’d been sitting round the TARDIS kitchen table with Donna and Jack, chatting amiably and reminiscing.

“I _really_ needed this, you guys,” Jack had said, sounding happier than he’d had in ages.  

The Doctor did too.  They’d come so close to losing everybody when the stars started disappearing.  The fact that they’d actually managed to pull through, despite the odds, was as good a cause for celebration as any the Doctor could think of.

But things didn’t stay innocent for long.  Happy chatting very quickly turned to drinking, as was often the case when Jack was around.  Then, the idiot suggested strip poker, Donna and Rose _both_ started cheering, and… well…  

The rest, as they say, was history.

* * *

 

An hour into the game, the Doctor slowly turns beet red  as the woman he’s been in love with ever since Cardiff sits half-naked across from him.  

She’s in no apparent hurry to stop playing this bloody game anytime soon.

“Whose turn is it to deal?” Rose asks the room, smiling.  She turns in her chair and looks right the Doctor.  The three pints she’s had this evening are a bright flush on her cheeks as she gives a nervous giggle.  “Doctor?  What’s the matter?  Cat got your tongue?”

The Doctor (who lost his own jacket and tie forty-seven minutes ago) looks up at her.  But his eyes flit quickly away when he sees how gorgeously her small breasts bounce inside that lacy black bra when she laughs.

“Nothing’s wrong with me.  I’m right as rain.”  But the Doctor can tell that his face is getting redder by the second.  What’s worse, the front of his bloody trousers are starting to get uncomfortably tight.  Out of the corner of his eye he sees Jack smirking his stupid face off.  It’s all the Doctor can do not to fix him with the most ominous Oncoming Storm glare he can muster for getting him into this bloody mess in the first place.  

The Doctor sighs, and closes his eyes.  He has to get a grip on himself.  He quickly counts backwards in his head from ten million.  He wills himself not to shame himself utterly in front of Rose and their friends by dissolving into a puddle of adoration at her feet.

“You look at bit off, Doctor,” Donna adds.  The Doctor can hear the smirk in her voice.  Some best mate she’s turning out to be.

The Doctor shakes his head.  “It’s… nothing.  I’m just… uh.  It’s just…” The Doctor’s tongue suddenly feels ten inches thick and he stumbles over his words, certain the entire room is staring at him now.   “It’s just that I’m _really_ hoping I don’t have to see Jack naked tonight, is all.”

The room bursts into raucous laughter, Rose shimmies out of her bra, and the Doctor prays to any deity that might be listening for small mercies.


	14. Cheap Date (Ten x Rose, AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "three sentence ficlet" for goingtothetardis in response to the following prompt: "Ten x Rose, meeting in line for chips." 
> 
> This somehow turned into a 450-word ficlet, which in turn begat a plot bunny I can't shake. Hee! :) I'd like to expand on this soon... but I can't until I've got a few more fic things wrapped up first.

“Err, thanks for lunch.  I can’t believe I forgot my wallet at home,” the lanky bloke with the brown eyes, sexy specs, and wild hair said sheepishly after Rose paid the girl behind the counter for their food.   He looked embarrassed.  Which made sense, really.  

It’s certainly not every day you need a complete stranger to bail you out of an embarrassing lunch counter situation in front of a dozen other people.

“’s no problem,” Rose said, smiling a little.  Because it wasn’t.  His stuff hadn’t been expensive; it was just a small order of chips and a drink.  Rose got paid from her campus job this morning, too, so she had plenty of cash on hand.  

It was the sort of thing she could see herself doing, really – ordering lunch without realizing she didn’t have her wallet until it was too late.  Maybe helping him out just now was her way of thanking the universe in advance for small favors.

Rose turned to go, then, her own tray in hand.  But before she’d gone more than five feet he tapped her on the shoulder to stop her.  

“Let me take you to lunch soon,” the guy insisted.  His cheeks had gone a little pink, but if he was embarrassed or nervous that was the only sign.   His voice was lovely, steady, and deep, and his brown eyes stared unabashedly into hers.  They were gorgeous, actually, his eyes.  The kind of eyes you could get lost in.

“Lunch?” Rose asked, eyebrow raised.

“Yes.  Lunch.  To… er.  To thank you.  For this.”  He gestured to his tray.   

“I’d like that,” Rose said, feeling herself smiling at him.  He beamed back at her, making a small dimple pop up in his right cheek and lighting up his entire face, and filling up her stomach with a silly swarm of butterflies in the process.

“Brilliant!” he said.  “Oh, that’s… that’s brilliant.”  His grin grew wider.  “I’m John.  John Noble.  Err – Professor John Noble, that is. I teach chemistry over at Gallifrey.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back towards the direction of the university Rose had come from herself not ten minutes ago.

“Really,” Rose said, hoping her surprise didn’t show on her face.

* * *

 

After exchanging numbers with Professor Noble and saying goodbye, Rose wondered, nervously, if she might bump into him someday on campus.   

She was a business major, of course.  And a non-traditional student to boot.  She had no intention of taking any more courses in the science building than she absolutely had to in order to graduate.

As she ate her chips in silence, though, Rose figured that stranger things had likely happened.  She fingered the business card he gave her, and decided that either way, she was glad she kept the fact that she’s a student at Gallifrey to herself.


	15. in the dark of night (ten x rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for followedmystar on tumblr, who prompted: "Doctor/Rose, dark."

There were a lot of things the Doctor was prepared for.

Alien invasions, for one thing.  Having to charm his way out of hostile situations with nothing but his trusty sonic and his wits to protect him, for another.

Nothing in any of his lives, however, had prepared him for this.

“It’s you,” Rose said, breathlessly, when they finally stopped running, just a few inches of charged space all that separated him now from the girl he’d lost years ago in what felt like a different lifetime entirely.

“Um,” he said stupidly.  Because even in his wildest dreams he never imagined that _she’d_ be the one to find _him._ Much less like this: here, during the darkest night in recent memory, with the stars going out and an army of Daleks on the cusp of destroying them all.

She laughed, then, the sound like tinkling bells or the wind through the trees. He wanted to grab her – right there, right then, the rest of the universe be damned – and show her all the ways he missed her.  

But there’d be time for that later.

“It’s me,” the Doctor agreed when he finally got his stupid tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth. He smiled at her, unable to believe this wasn’t some kind of fever dream, and she laughed again – so long, and so beautifully – and he was home.


	16. Secrets (Ten x Rose, AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for timepetalsprompts' weekly prompt involving dinosaurs and/or other prehistoric animals. I took some liberties with the prompt. ;)

“Tell me a secret.”

It was the last thing John expected Rose to say to him tonight, both of them hunched miserably over their paleontology textbooks for their regularly scheduled night-before-exams cramming session.

“Um.  What?” he asked, not certain he heard her correctly.  He hoped he wasn’t blushing.  He didn’t think he was, anyway.

“I hate this,” Rose said, gesturing to their books and papers by way of explanation.  “So boring.  We’ve been going over these brontosaurs and plesiosaurs and… all these dodgy _saurs_ for hours now.   I think I’ve memorized them, and their eras, and their bones, and all of their stupid everythings as well as I’m ever going to.”  She shoved her book away from her for emphasis.

“Ok,” John said, swallowing thickly.  “So…”

“So I want you to tell me a secret,” she repeated, shrugging.  “Or a story.  I don’t care what you tell me, John, just…” she trailed off, shaking her head.  “Just tell me something fun that I don’t already know.”

John looked down at his hands.  Now he _knew_ he was blushing.

It had taken John nearly three months to work up the courage to talk to Rose Tyler.  Another two to ask if she wanted to maybe study with him for exams sometime.  He wanted more from her – to take her hand; to hold her close; to take her to next month’s formal, his face buried in her sweet-smelling hair as they danced together among their friends and the university’s tacky decorations.

But John’s courage did not stretch far enough to propose any of this to her.  And so her study buddy he remained.

“A secret,” John repeated.

“Yeah,” Rose shrugged again.  She turned in her chair to face him, crossing one shapely leg over the other, and cocked her head to the side.  “It’ll be fun.”  She grinned at him, the tip of her tongue touching the corner of her mouth in that way of hers that drove him mad.  “I’ll tell you one too, in exchange.  But you go first.”

“Um.  All right, then,” John said.

He nodded once, and then cleared his throat.

 _Here goes nothing_.

“Ok.  A secret,” he said, bracing himself.  He swallowed hard and coughed into his hand.  “I kind of… well.  I sort of… fancy someone.” he admitted to the floor.  “Err…. kind of, anyway.”  

“Oh, you do?” Rose asked.  He chanced a look up at her face.  Her eyes were dancing with – what?  Silent laughter?  Mild amusement?  He couldn’t tell.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding.  His eyes dropped again to the floor and he tugged self-consciously on his ear.  “But… but I’m pretty sure she has no idea.”

Rose reached out, then, and touched his knee.  Her hand was warm.  John couldn’t help but wonder, fleetingly, if it was as soft as it looked.

“You should tell her anyway,” Rose said very quickly.  He looked up again, looked into her eyes.  Her voice was steady and even.  The hand on his knee, however, trembled slightly, and her cheeks were becoming nearly as rosy as his own were.  

He swallowed.  “You think I should tell her?”

Rose nodded.  “Yeah,” she said.  She laughed a little.  It was a nervous sound.  Was Rose Tyler _nervous_?  “I do.”

“Oh,” he said.   “Well.  Maybe I will.”  He looked down at her hand, still resting on his knee, and then back up at her face.  He smiled.  “But first, Rose, it’s your turn to tell me _your_ secret.”

She nodded.  She took a deep breath.  “All right,” she said, her voice a low whisper.  “Here goes nothing.”


	17. Sunburn (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written a few weeks ago for timepetalsprompts' weekly drabble prompt: "Tender"

The Doctor squeezes a generous dollop of lotion on his palm and rubs his hands together vigorously, willing himself to get a grip.

“Doctor,” Rose says, something sounding a lot like impatience creeping into her voice.  She stands with her back to him in what has to be the skimpiest two-piece bathing suit he’s ever seen, one hand holding up her tousled blonde hair atop her head and exposing her neck.

The Doctor knows – on some level, at least – that her request for him to help apply sunscreen to her back is an entirely reasonable one.  Ten minutes in the hot Alabarian sun last week had been enough to turn her skin bright red and unbearably tender to the touch.  The political situation here demands both that they extend their visit for at least another two days, _and_  that they accept an invitation to join the Queen at the royal beach this afternoon.

And so there’s nothing to be done for it, really.  Rose quite simply cannot reach certain spots on her back as well as he can.  And the Doctor knows that a second severe sunburn in such a short span of time will increase Rose’s risk of skin cancer by an unacceptable amount.  

He’s just going to have to think about something else while his hands are on her.  Yes.  Something other than the fact that his beautiful companion is, for all practical intents and purposes, naked, and that he will be rubbing lotion into her soft, lovely skin with nothing separating their bodies but a few inches of charged space and a few useless scraps of lycra clothing.

“Doctor,” Rose says again, interrupting his reverie.  There’s no mistaking her impatience this time.  Her long, supple limbs stretch up, and up, and her bathing suit leaves nearly nothing whatsoever to the imagination, but he needs to _touch_ her now and gods help him, he’s going to do it, he’s going to rub this stuff into her back and –

The Doctor grits his teeth, takes a deep breath, and puts his hands on her.  The feel of his oil-slicked palms sliding over her smooth slippery skin nearly undoes him.  She sighs in pleasure, again and again, as his hands move over her back, her shoulders, and he wonders just how the hell he’s going to survive the next three hours.


	18. At the Match (Ten x Rose AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For snufflestheanimagus on tumblr, who prompted: "Ten x Rose, where he's flustered about kissing Rose." I'd like to continue this someday, but in the meantime, here's the short ficlet. ;)

As John and his friends slowly make their way through the parking lot after the football match, he’s vaguely aware they’re both making merciless fun of him.

But in the moment he can’t be bothered to care.

* * *

 

It had caught both of them completely by surprise, getting caught on camera like that in front of forty-five thousand screaming football fans.  The sun was in his eyes, and her own eyes glinted honey-gold in embarrassment when she looked up and realised what had happened.

But.  But then, a moment later, the girl’s arms were round his neck and his tongue was in her mouth.  And just like that, they were the only two people in the world.

He doesn’t even know her name, John realizes suddenly.  She was in a Man U jersey, and her hair was tousled and blonde.  Her skin was bronzed and beautiful, soft under his hands and utterly flawless.  But aside from those irrelevant details — and the fact that John’s lips still taste of her cherry red lip balm — he knows nothing about the girl he just snogged on live television.

“Doctor, you still got it,” Jack says, clapping him hard on the back as Donna laughs and laughs.  Donna makes a lewd comment under his breath that John can’t quite make out.  Whatever it was, though, it earns a wolf-whistle from Jack, and he knows it can’t be good.

John ignores them both and closes his eyes, seeing the girl as she was when they finally pulled apart.  She was breathless and embarrassed, but so wasn’t he.  And the way she bit at that luscious, lower bottom lip of hers before turning to follow her own mates out of the arena would stay with him for days.

As John fumbles around in his pocket for the keys to his car, he decides, suddenly, that somehow – he doesn’t know how; but he’s clever, very clever, _dammit_ – he will find her again.  Touch her again.  Learn her name, and everything else about her besides.

All he needs is a plan.


	19. Heat Wave (Ten x Rose AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a three-sentence-ficlet prompt from itsonlythesoaps on tumblr: "how about Rose & the Doctor meet cute at the movies where both go to beat the heat and they end up seeing something truly awful." This is more like fifteen sentences though because I have few skills. ;)

The film on the screen in front of him – some dreadful thing involving zombies, or eyes; or perhaps zombies _with_ eyes – had stopped holding his attention the minute the girl in the seat next to him showed up, fifteen minutes into the picture and looking as overheated and miserable as he’d been before coming here.

Rose – she’d introduced herself as Rose in a loud whisper as she took her seat – told him she hadn’t had time to grab a popcorn beforehand.  “Could I have a handful?” she asked, nodding at his extra large bag.   “I’m starving.”  John  couldn’t see her – or anything else for that matter – very well in the gloom of the theatre.  But he’d have to be blind not to see how pretty she was, and how gorgeously her lips curved into a shy smile as she spoke.  

John swallowed nervously before answering her.  “Um.  Sure,” he said, marveling at this girl’s boldness.  

As the terrible film continued, their hands brushed repeatedly inside the bag of popcorn, and John had never been so grateful in his life for hot afternoons and his flat’s lack of air conditioning.


	20. lipstick vogue (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angsty ficlet for mountaingirlheidi, who sent me a slew of prompts on tumblr to help me get over some horrific writer's block. ;) I combined two of the prompts for this: "Ten x Rose, red lipstick" and "Ten x Rose, catapult and something involving Jack and/or Donna." 
> 
> Title inspired by the Elvis Costello song of the same name.

It’s not until after the Doctor drops Donna off at her mum’s and granddad’s – soaking wet and in her ruined wedding dress – that he finds it.

A single tube of lipstick.  Rose’s, of course.  Lying on top of the vanity in his en suite, right next to his toothpaste and hair gel, as casually as if it had always been there.

Rose only wore this particular lipstick twice but the Doctor remembers it vividly.  The way the color highlighted the natural rosiness of her complexion.  How it tasted on his tongue when he kissed her.  The mess it made of his shirt, that first time they gave in to their shared passion, her lips on his neck as his hands inched hungrily up her thighs.

The vision of Rose and her embarrassed giggles when she’d discovered the sticky red smears on his collar the next morning surface quickly, unbidden.  The Doctor’s hearts clench painfully in his chest at the memory, and he has to squeeze his eyes tightly shut to stave off yet another bout of angry tears.  

He should get rid of this thing.  The Doctor knows that.  He should catapult it, and all the other things Rose left behind when she was ripped away from him, into the nearest sun.  And then he should run, and run, and _run_ from the memories of his precious Rose Tyler and never look back.

But he won’t.  He can’t.

He shuffles brokenly into her bedroom instead.  It’s just as she left it this morning, clothes strewn carelessly about the floor and the bedcovers a mess.  The lies down, fully clothed, on top of the sheets, not even bothering to remove his trainers.  He can still smell, feel, taste her in the air here, the sensations so overpowering it takes all his restraint not to jump up, right then, right there, and _find her_  again goddamnit, the repercussions to the universe be damned. 

“Rose,” he says weakly – to her; to the empty air; to any deity who might be listening – clutching the red tube in his hand like a lifeline, praying for the universe to finish him at last.


	21. His Moves (Nine x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for lizziea2 on tumblr, who prompted "Tarantism: The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing." Also written for TPP's weekly drabble prompt: "Confused." Because nothing says "confused" more than a dancing Nine. ;)

The Doctor only suggested dancing to show Jack his intrusion here is unwelcome.

He reminds himself of this repeatedly once Rose is in his arms in the console room, her hands in his, her head resting lightly on his chest.

But it’s not long before both Jack and the Doctor’s flimsy excuse fade into the background.  Rose moves, he sways with her – and then there’s nothing else in existence but her, and this, and them.

The whole universe could fit on the head of a pin as Rose smiles at him and he grapples – reeling, mystified; utterly besotted and terrified – with what comes next.


	22. to show you my love (Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written as a "trick or treat!" ficlet for hanluvr, who prompted: "Tentoo x Rose and fluffy please (and thank you!). So sweet it gives me a cavity. <3" Inspired by booandleashylookru‘s adorable headcanon. :)

“When did you first know you loved me?” Rose asks, her voice thick with sleep, as the first dim light of dawn filters in through their bedroom window.

The Doctor smiles at her question.  He wraps his arms around her and nuzzles her neck, tugging her closer.

“When did I first know I loved you?” he repeats.  He pauses, pretending to consider the question.  “Hm.  Well, to be honest with you I’m not quite sure.”

Rose nudges him playfully in the ribs.  And he laughs, because of course he’s sure.  They’ve had this conversation dozens – possibly hundreds – of times in the year since they returned, together, to this world.  It’s become a sort of touchstone for them both. Something that heals her, every time, just as much as it heals him.

“Tell me again? Please?” she asks.  She presses feather-light kisses across his collarbone, up his neck, and along his jaw, punctuating each press of her lips to his skin with little hums of satisfaction and whispers of his name.

The Doctor doesn’t know what he might have done in any of his lifetimes to deserve such happiness. But it’s here, and it’s real, and it’s theirs.

“I think… I think I first knew I loved you when we were in Cardiff at Christmas,” he tells her, his voice going a bit gruff.  Her kisses are growing bolder, now, and her hands are beginning to wander.  It makes it rather difficult to hold on to the thread of the conversation.  “You were so brave, Rose.  So beautiful. You were fantastic.”  He sighs dreamily.  “You still are.”

“Cardiff?” she asks, feigning surprise.  This is part of the ritual too.  “That long ago?”

“Mmm,” he says.  “Possibly.”  He tightens his hold on her as she rests her head on his chest and nestles more snuggly against his side.  “I definitely knew it by the time we were on that bloody game station.”

The truth of the matter is the Doctor has known – or at least, he’s strongly suspected – that he’s loved Rose Tyler from the minute he first met her and told her to run.  But he’d been too damaged, and far too cowardly, to do anything about it then.  And for several years afterwards.

But not anymore.

“So many lost opportunities to tell you, Rose,” he murmurs against her tousled hair.  He rolls them over so that he’s hovering just above her, less than an inch of charged space all that’s separating his lips from hers.

“I know,” she whispers. She reaches up and caresses his cheek so tenderly, so gently, it feels like his single heart break.

“I love you so much, Rose,” he says.

As they kiss and twine together in the near darkness of early dawn, he promises himself she will never go without knowing his love again.


	23. Sneaking Around (Tentoo x Rose, NSFW)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For timepetalsprompts' weekly drabble prompt: "Feelings." In which Tentoo feels some feelings that are *dirty*. I suck at keeping things to 100 words so have a double-drabbly copout, lol

The Doctor shoves his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out as the first press of Rose’s tongue to his rigid flesh sends shock waves of sensation rocketing through him.

Normally, he likes to make noise when they’re together. Rose’s usually the quiet one, biting her lip to hold back her pleasured moans.

But now, he must stay as quiet as he can. Her parents are downstairs hosting Torchwood’s annual Christmas event. And it wouldn’t do for all those people to hear him moaning while Rose licks him senseless five minutes after sneaking out of the party. 

——-

“God,” the Doctor grits out as Rose – her slinky black dress hiked up to her waist, her breasts pressed firmly against his thighs – slowly runs her tongue up one side of him and down the other. Her hand works his length in tandem with her mouth, twisting as she licks and nips and sucks. 

He can feel her writhing in pleasure against him even as she pleasures him.

They’ll have to make a reappearance downstairs eventually. But she’s looking up at him through her eyelashes as her cheeks hollow out, and god, those dignitaries will just have to wait.


	24. Spinters and Bedposts (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for TPP's weekly drabble prompt: "Boisterous."

The Doctor blinked dazedly up at the ceiling, unable to believe what just happened.  

Rose lay beside him on the floor, her beautiful bare body still tangled up in his bedsheets, laughing like their breaking his bed was the funniest thing in the world.

He turned onto his side so he could watch her.  Her face was rosy with pleasure and delight, and the Doctor knew he couldn’t possibly love her any more.

“Next time,” the Doctor began, grinning in spite of himself, when at last her laughter began to subside. “Perhaps next time I should be a little less… boisterous?”

Rose rolled on top of him by way of response.    

“Oh, I dunno,” she said, pressing herself intimately against him.  “Seems like a broken bed is a small price to pay for all this.”  She gestured to him, to her, and to the way their bodies fit together so gorgeously.  And as she kissed him, the Doctor decided Rose was probably right.


	25. leaves that are green (tentoo x rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For timepetalsprompts weekly theme: outdoor fall activities.

They never took the time while travelling among the stars to simply walk together through the woods and admire the autumn colors.

And so despite the fact that they are only just now beginning to fall into a comfortable routine with one another – even though their frosty relationship is only very slowly beginning to thaw – the Doctor makes sure they make time for it now.

At first he has to plead with Rose to leave the flat.  To put aside for an hour the grief and reluctance that still cling to her, even though it’s been three months since the Time Lord Doctor left and everything changed.  

But time passes, as it always does.  Eventually, it begins to heal.  By the time November comes, and the brilliant green-gold-auburn leaves of this universe begin to cascade down around them in the dappled afternoon sunlight, Rose looks forward to their walks as much as he does.  

The Doctor kisses her for the first time that really counts up against the tree Tony sometimes likes to hide in while playing.  His big warm hands tremble a little as they cradle her face, her hands twining needfully in his hair.  The swirling late autumn winds buffet them in a protective cocoon while they kiss, as the leaves pile up at their feet, and it feels like nothing so much as a new beginning.


	26. Baby Shoes (Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A three-sentence ficlet written for lvslie, who prompted: "Tentoo x Rose, shoes." I almost never write baby!fic but this idea wouldn't leave me alone.

“But Doctor, Wilfred was only just born; he won’t be able to wear those for at least another two years,” Rose said, trying – and failing – to keep the smile out of her voice.

The Doctor brushed aside her comment with a dismissive wave of his hand and continued arranging Wilf’s new miniature trainers in neat rows in his closet.  “It’s important our son have have adequate footwear, Rose,” he said, his tone so serious it brooked no opposition; and as Rose watched him crouched down on the floor, working, she couldn’t help but wonder how she got so lucky.


	27. Something Cute (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny fic written for natalie-wood on tumblr, who prompted: "Ten x Rose, doing something cute."

“Are you sure you don’t mind doing this for me?” Rose asked, trying her hardest not to giggle at the look of intense of intense concentration on the Doctor’s face.

The Doctor _tsked_  her reproachfully but didn’t look up from his work.  “Of course I don’t mind, Rose,” he said, his words measured and precise, as though he were worried too loud a response might jostle the table too much.  The left side of his mouth quirked up into a half smile as he continued to apply nail polish to her fingernails in clean, even, careful strokes.  “I’ll have you know that in my youth I briefly interned with the head manicurist for the Gallifreyan Royal Family. Quite happily I might add.”

At that, Rose just couldn’t hold it in any longer.  She laughed, so hard and so long, that it did jostle the table, and in the end she wound up with a bright red stripe of _Lustful Red_  nail lacquer all down the side of her right pinky finger.  The Doctor scowled at her for ruining his work – but then she kissed his scowl away, and then fingers and nail polish were promptly forgotten by everyone involved.  


	28. I want to kiss you.  (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five-sentence-fic prompt from an anon on tumblr: "I want to kiss you."

The Doctor clapped his hand over his mouth, but it was too late: the truth serum their jailors gave them had done its job.  Now his words – and the truth about how he felt– were out there, hanging heavy in the air between them like an anvil about to fall.

He shut his eyes and groaned, dreading what Rose’s reaction would be. 

But he opened them again a second later when, to his surprise, he felt a pair of soft, warm hands cradle his face.  “I want that too, Doctor,” Rose murmured, a moment before she pressed her lips to his.


	29. Second Chance (Ten x Rose, Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bring you non-Rogue One fic (!!) in the form of a ficlet I wrote for Gingergallifreyan on tumblr in response to the prompt: "Tentoo x Rose, or Ten x Rose: A hug gone wrong." I opted for both. Sort of.

Sometimes, when the Doctor can’t sleep, his mind wanders back to that wonderful, horrible night when he and Rose were reunited at last.

It had been like something you’d see in old Hollywood movie, really – both of them running towards each other, oblivious to anyone and everything else as they ran, hurtling along the empty ruined street as though drawn together by their own, private gravitational pull.

And then, suddenly, the comparison to anything one might have seen in a cinema sixty years ago came to an abrupt end with one fateful blast from a Dalek.

During these sleepless nights the Doctor then thinks about the impossible chain of events that led to his birth.  Or, rebirth, he supposes. He thinks about how he is here, with Rose, curled up beside her in their comfortable bed while the other him, the other Doctor is somewhere else.  Travelling all alone, now, even if technically he’s found another companion with whom to share the endless empty hours.

The Doctor can’t bring himself to hate him for leaving them here.  He knew why he did it right from the start, even if it took Rose longer to understand. Their weak telepathic connection was severed the moment he took Donna away in the TARDIS back on Bad Wolf Bay, but he knows – he _knows_  – that wherever, whenever he is, he is suffering.  And always will.  

On these nights, the Doctor wraps himself around Rose’s sleeping form and breathes in her unique scent.  He marvels at her beauty, in his luck – and in the beautiful, miraculous gift the other Doctor gave him in this second chance.


	30. Broken (Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to two prompts on tumblr: "POPTARTS!" and "Broken."

The Doctor stared at the toaster, and at the smoke pouring out of it, utterly baffled as to what was going on.

“What in the world…?” he muttered under his breath, staring at the cord that connected the toaster to the outlet in the wall as though it held the answer he was looking for.

“Doctor,” Rose said from behind him.  He turned to face her and saw she was trying to hide a smile in the palm of her hand.

He huffed in frustration.  “What ?” he asked.

“Erm,” she said, rubbing at the back of her neck.  She was picking up on his nervous tells, he could see.  Under normal circumstances he’d find that endearing but at the moment their breakfast was burning and he wasn’t finding much of anything cute at all.  “I think next time you probably shouldn’t put ten frozen poptarts in the toaster all at the same time.  Possibly.”

The Doctor looked at her.  “Huh,” he said.  That wasn’t something he’d considered before.  “You think I should have put in fewer poptarts?”

She nodded.  “Yeah,” she said, not even bothering to hide her smile now.  “I think you’ve gotten a whole bunch jammed in there and now the toaster’s broken.  And, also, um… that our breakfast is on fire.”

They spent the rest of the morning out, buying breakfast at a local stall and trying to find a good deal on a new toaster. And that was how the Doctor learned how to make breakfast.


	31. Movie (Tentoo x Rose0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Whoinwhoville as part of my tumblr follower milestone fic giveaway thingy. She prompted "Doctor x Rose, watching a movie."

The film they’d been watching ended more than twenty minutes ago.  But the Doctor doesn’t get up to shut off the telly.

He’s so reluctant to move he even wishes, for the first time in months, that he still had a respiratory bypass so he could forego breathing for a while.

His only regret is he can’t see Rose’s face in his current position.  

Because he’s facing forward and her head is resting on his shoulder.  It’s been there, in fact, ever since Meg Ryan shocked Billy Crystal in that old New York deli.  And now Rose is sleeping with his arms wrapped lightly around her and her lips parted, allowing him to feel each and every one of her sleepy little breaths against the sensitive skin of his throat. 

This is the closest they’ve been to one another since that horrible, wonderful day when they were left here together in this parallel universe.  She was so reticent with him at first – so reluctant to touch him in any way, or to let him in.  And now here they are, snuggling together on their sofa and watching a classic romantic comedy that, fortunately, is more or less identical to its equivalent in the prime universe. Her hands are pressed lightly against his chest as she dozes, and the Doctor is so full of hope for the future it feels like his single heart might burst.

There’s an infomercial on, now, for some rubbish hair product the Doctor would never use in a hundred lifetimes.  It’s terrible, and under normal circumstances he’d never subject himself to it.  In the moment, however, he finds he doesn’t mind it one bit.


	32. You're staring.  (Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A five sentence fic written for megabadbunny for the prompt: "You're staring."

_“You’re staring.”_

The sound of Rose’s voice is enough to finally snap the Doctor out of his distracted stupor.

“Erm… sorry,” he mumbles sheepishly, tearing his eyes away from her – and her incredible, slinky black dress – with great difficulty.  “Won’t happen again,” he adds quickly – because it can’t happen again; she’d let him move in with her, but only because he’d had nowhere else to _go_ after his Time Lord counterpart left them here.  

The last thing she needs, or wants, is to have the man she’d never wanted to get stuck with in the first place ogling her in her outfit for tonight’s Torchwood gala.

Rose giggles, and his eyes are drawn towards her again a moment before she admits, very quietly:  “I didn’t say I minded.”


	33. Gentle Kiss (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the five sentences meme: "Gently, the Doctor pressed a kiss to Rose's skin."

_Gently, the Doctor pressed a kiss to Rose’s skin._

He hadn’t wanted to wake her – because she looked so peaceful in slumber, so resplendent, her hair fanning out around her on her pillow as she slept like a golden crown.

But his willpower didn’t stretch very far anymore insofar as Rose Tyler was concerned, and before he could stop himself from doing it again he pressed a second kiss, and then a third, to the sweet juncture of exposed skin at her collarbone.

Eventually, Rose stirred, saying “good morning, Doctor,” on a sleepy sigh. She rolled over in bed and flung one arm around his shoulder, burrowing her face into his chest as sleep pulled her under once more.

The Doctor stayed awake for a long while after that, wondering what he could possibly have done in any of his lives to have deserved such joy.


	34. Can't Hardly Wait (Ten x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written nearly two years ago for one of TPP's earliest prompts. I totally forgot all about it until lunaseemoony reblogged it the other day out of the blue. So now I'm posting it to AO3. Thanks, Moony. ;)

The Doctor bounces on the balls of his feet, waiting impatiently for Rose to finally emerge so they can get going. 

They’re going on a date. A proper date. He’d asked her, words tripping over each other in their haste to leave his mouth, brown eyes hidden behind his specs and fixed firmly on his trainers.  And she’d said yes half a heartbeat later, eyes on him and tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth as she smiled. 

He’s leaving his psychic paper behind tonight.  Oh, yes. It won’t do to be interrupted by an emergency from god only knows where while he’s out at a nice dinner with Rose Tyler, who  _finally,_ after  _all this time_  –

“Doctor,” Rose says when she arrives, cutting into his babbling internal monologue.

He looks up in the direction of her voice.  She’s wearing a tight, low-cut top and a little denim skirt that stops a few inches above the knee.  Her outfit hugs her body in all the places he’s been longing to hug her since… well.  Since longer ago than he’s willing to admit.

“Erm,” he says, an idiot, eyes roving over her in a way he hopes doesn’t seem pervy.  He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet again – blimey; he just can’t help it. He’s wanted this for so long and he’s giddy as a teenager.  

She crosses the console room slowly, her hips swaying as she walks.  When she reaches him she leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth.  She pulls back just as slowly.  He’s reeling.

“Shall we go?” she asks, one eyebrow raised in question.  She’s smiling again.  

The Doctor mumbles something unintelligible, but what he means to say is  _yes, Rose, anything you say, always_.  He gently rests his hand at the small of her back as they step out of the TARDIS, forcing his legs to keep pace with her as they walk, willing the soles of his shoes to remain firmly on the ground and not fly off into the stratosphere in his excitement for their evening to begin at last.


	35. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Tentoo x Rose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to an anonymous tumblr prompt: "Could you write a little thing where Tentoo accidentally sends penis ghost out on the Torchwood/Earth Defence email instead of just Rose?" This is the first bit of fic I've written in *months* so I hope it's not atrocious, lol

The Doctor, already nine-and-a-half minutes late for today’s meeting, throws open the door to the tenth floor conference room and sits down in the first available chair.

He is so flustered by the fact that he missed the start of an important meeting,  _again_ , all because he was too wrapped up in the day’s experiments to remember that Pete wanted to talk with everybody this afternoon before going home, that it takes him a few moments to realise everyone here is staring, wide-eyed and silently, at their laptops, rather than engaging in the sorts of discussions they usually have in this wood-paneled room. 

The Doctor rubs at the back of his neck, perplexed. “What’s going on?” he asks. Surely Pete called this meeting for a reason that didn’t involve everyone blinking at their laptops, looking stunned.

He looks across the table at Rose, hoping she’ll give him some kind of clue. 

But she isn’t looking at him.

No; Rose – whose face is beet red for some reason – is bent over her mobile, texting feverishly.

A moment later the Doctor’s mobile buzzes in his pocket. Frowning, he pulls it out.

And he nearly jumps out of his chair when he reads Rose’s five-word message:

_You. Sent. It. To. EVERYBODY._

Rose doesn’t specify what she means by the word “it.” But one look at Pete’s face – which is nearly as ghostly pale as the sheet the Doctor draped over himself for that ill-advised photograph – is all the clarification he needs.

The Doctor swallows hard. He wonders, and not for the first time, if it might be possible for a person to be swallowed up by the earth in this parallel universe if he simply wished for it hard enough.

 _Note to self_ , he thinks bitterly, as he tries to pry himself off the seat of his chair.  _Have Rose teach you how to disable that bloody “Reply All” function on Torchwood’s email._


	36. What did you expect? (Ten x Rose, with an extra helping of Jack)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five-sentence-fic prompt from mountaingirlhedi: "I don't know what you expected." Inspired by a photograph of cookies shaped and decorated like penises that was on Caedmon's FB page. Because of course it was. ;)

_“I don’t know what you expected.”_

The Doctor looks from one lewdly-decorated cookie to another, his face turning a shade of red Rose hadn’t even thought was possible.

“Yeah,” the Doctor says, his voice strangely strangled. “You’re right, Rose – when Jack told us he was opening up a bakery called  _Eat Me_  I probably should have guess it would be something like…. this.”

As Jack happily chats with the customers in his new bakery, Rose has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the Doctor’s expression when he finally comes to the special Valentine’s Day aisle.

“I’m going to have to remember to thank Jack for this later,” Rose thinks, unable to remember a time she was more amused.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to say hello to me on tumblr, I'm there as jeeno2. :)


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